How does the library acquire the vast collections for the customers?
Turku University Library acquires hundreds of individual printed and electronic books every year. There is also altogether a subscription to about 800 printed and electronic journals. However, the majority of the appropriation for the resources is spent on acquiring e-book and e-journal packages and document databases as well as for other electronic resources to support the research and the studying in the university.
Turku University Library as a member of the acquisition consortium
The smaller and less expensive e-book and e-journal packages and databases the library mainly acquires directly from the aggregators and the publishers. However, the license agreements negotiated by the consortium FinELib, formed by the Finnish universities, polytechnics, research institutions and the general libraries, take the majority of the budget.
The task of FinELib is to secure and improve the availability of electronic resources and to lighten the work of libraries. There is no need for the individual libraries to negotiate for the terms of agreement and usage independently with the suppliers of all electronic resources. In the FinELib office there is wider expertise and established agreement principles which can be used as the basis for the negotiations.
FinELib supports the principle of open science
During the past few years, the principle of open science has become an important part of the license agreement negotiations. University of Turku has also taken open science into its strategy. There is an attempt to get an element of open science as part of the license agreements to promote the open publishing of research articles by including the article processing charges as part of the agreements.
FinELib often negotiates on access to the big publishers' large and expensive resources and this enables good value and better terms when the subscribers establish a consortium. Good examples of these kind of resources are the Elsevier’s large e-journal database ScienceDirect Freedom Collection and ProQuest’s Academic Complete e-book database. On the other hand, MOT dictionary service, the reference management program RefWorks and the reference database Web of Science are examples of resources of a different kind which the libraries get access to, thanks to FinELib. Every year the libraries get to propose new resources for FinELib negotiations and the most important ones are chosen by a vote before FinELib begins the negotiations.
The FinELib office serving the consortium operates in The National Library of Finland. The FinELib web pages contain useful information about publishing articles openly and about the discounts of author processing charges. There is also information on the separate stages of the negotiations for an agreement when the agreement of an important database is about to end and the access to the resource threatens to break.
Links:
FinELib web pages
University rectors demand open access
ScienceDirect Freedom Collection
Ebook Academic Complete
MOT dictionary service
RefWorks
Web of Science
Further information on the library resources and on the acquisition:
Head of Library Services Tiina Eklund
tiina.eklund@utu.fi
p +358 50 307 1872